"And...?" I replied with eager anticipation.
"Abu remembered you from the ER when you took care of him. He said you were really polite, and he thought that you were the kindest doctor he had ever met."
I didn't know my patient, Mr. Ahmed, was Madi's father when I took care of him. And I would have treated him like any other patient had I known. Yet, I said a silent prayer of thanks to Allah that he had had a better impression of me than his daughter did, the first day I met her.
"What about Aunty?" I asked of her mother.
"I think you pretty much won her over the moment you offered to supervise the drinks and dessert table at Maliha's wedding."
"I thought that weirdo Faraz would have impressed her with his constant hovering." The image of that man as he circled around Madi and her parents like a vulture still made me want to punch him. But all that was put to rest when Madi looked at me coyly.
"Whose Faraz?"
She knew who he was. He was part of her family, after all. But I understood what she meant. He held no significance in her life, unlike me.
"Abu should be home any day too. I'll talk to my parents as soon as he lands," I promised her.
It was a promise that my sister helped me keep when her message pinged my phone soon after I reached home that evening. But the thing about promises is that they are far easier to make, than they are to keep. Especially, when the world literally shuts down as your parents shut you out of their life.
That's when promises turn into nightmares. And nightmares lead to blackholes of despair and loathing.
*******
March 11. WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 (World Health Organization News Briefing)
In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13-fold, and the number of affected countries has tripled. In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.
WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: all countries can still change the course of this pandemic. If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace, and mobilize their people in the response, those with a handful of cases can prevent those cases becoming clusters, and those clusters becoming community transmission.
There's been so much attention on one word: Pandemic. Let me give you some other words that matter much more, and that are much more actionable. Prevention. Preparedness. Public health. Political leadership. And most of all, people.
We're in this together, to do the right things with calm and protect the citizens of the world. It's doable.
I skimmed the WHO news briefing from that morning while Sehr waited on FaceTime to finish. "What does all of this mean in simple terms? Are we all going to die?" she asked with a worried expression.
"Allah na kare, Sehr. There is still plenty we can do to prevent its spread. Start by limiting your interaction with others in closed spaces and wear a mask if you can," I told her some common sense measures that we had discussed in the hospital just that week.
YOU ARE READING
Mending Broken Hearts
Romance#2 in the desi medical romance series He couldn't get over his ex-fiancé who had unceremoniously broken off their engagement just five days before their wedding. She was engaged to a man who did not respect her or her work. Neither were looking for...
20. Pandemic
Start from the beginning
